title: Near-patient testing: implications for laboratory-based professions.
abstract: The current upheaval being experienced by the National Health Service in the UK is due partly to political and partly to technological changes in the mode of delivery of health care. The two can not be separated completely, but the implications for laboratory-based health care professions of technological changes that have occurred in their specialty, mainly within the last 10 years, are considered. These have made it increasingly possible to carry out previously complicated analytical manoeuvres outside the confines of a well-founded laboratory, but in doing so have brought with them problems as well as advantages for the providers of health care, as well as for its recipients--i.e. the patients.
authors.affiliation: University of Surrey, Guildford, England, UK.
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Marks
mesh_terms: D004632:Emergency Medical Services; D006801:Humans; D010338:Pathology, Clinical / Q000458:organization & administration* / Q000639:trends; D006113:United Kingdom; D000078329:Workforce